Farenthold questions DOJ inspector general on Fast and Furious politics

Operation Fast and Furious was many things – flawed in design, incompetently managed and needlessly prolonged -but it was not an ATF and Justice Department conspiracy to lay the groundwork for more gun control laws, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz said under questioning by Rep. Blake Farenthold, R-Texas.

Horowitz answered questions before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which in conjunction with Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, has spent over a year investigating the discredited Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, Tobacco and Explosives operation in Phoenix.

Unlike previous hearings in which Republican lawmakers who dominate the committee and Attorney General Eric Holder engaged in heated, vituperative exchanges, Horowitz’s appearance was a virtual love fest.

The inspector general won praise from committee Republicans and Democrats alike the day after his office released an exhaustive 471-page report that faulted ATF and the Justice Department for shoddy oversight of Fast and Furious while exonerating Holder.

The committee’s chairman, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., called the report “extremely comprehensive, strong and independent.’’ But Issa insisted that if necessary, he would continue to pursue legal avenues to obtain the 100,000 or so pages of documents that formed the basis of the inspector general’s report.

In Fast and Furious, ATF agents in 2009 and 2010 followed orders to let drug-cartel-connected middlemen ferry weapons purchased in the Phoenix area to Mexican drug kingpins rather than interdicting them. The aim was to build a case against higher-ups of the ruthless Sinaloa cartel. But Fast and Furious netted only small fry while up to 2,000 weapons including AK-47s were spirited to Mexico.

Two of the weapons were recovered at the murder site of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in December 2010, setting off a firestorm of controversy in Washington.

Among the Fast and Furious conspiracy theories popularized by gun-rights advocates and pro-gun commentators was that Holder and other Justice and Obama administration officials encouraged gun walking as a way of building a case for gun control, specifically a requirement that border-state firearms dealer tell ATF of multiple purchases of semiautomatic rifles greater than .22 caliber.

“Would your investigation have been able to uncover political motives behind allowing the operation to continue?’’ said Farenthold, the only Texan on the committee. “Or is the entire fiasco a result of just gross mismanagement?’’

Horowitz said there was evidence that Justice and ATF officials did, in fact, discuss the gun purchases in Fast and Furious as examples of the need for the multiple-purchase regulation.

“What we found is all of those instances came after the investigation had begun,’’ Horowitz said. “But we didn’t find evidence at the outset that (gun control) was driving (it).’’

After the hearing, Farenthold said he was not totally convinced.

While the inspector general’s report found no evidence of political motivation, Horowitz “did say it certainly was opportunistic when this did arise, that they might want to take advantage of it,’’ Farenthold said. “I think it’s an area that deserves further investigation.’’

At the hearing, Republicans dwelled on what they characterized as the report’s vindication of their contention that high-ranking officials should have known early on that Fast and Furious involved gun walking – letting illegally purchased guns get smuggled rather than intercepting them.

Democrats, however, pointed to a conclusion of the report that they said bolstered a claim they had made all along: Holder did not know about gun walking in Fast and Furious until February 2011, shortly after receiving a letter complaining about the investigation from Grassley.

“Operation Fast and Furious – I like to call it `vast and curious’ – originated with the local Phoenix office of the ATF and the U.S. attorney (in Phoenix) and (was) not the result of any strategy or directive from main Justice,’’ said Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y.

She asked Horowitz: “How is it that these tactics started? What went wrong? . . . What were they thinking?’’

Horowitz responded that ATF supervisors honestly believed they were serving the “greater good’’ by setting their sights on cartel bigger fish, even if that meant ignoring the street-level gun purchasers and smugglers.

“As we found, that was an incorrect calculation,’’ Horowitz said. “Law enforcement’s primary objective is to protect the public. You can’t take action to let guns walk that will harm people for the greater good.’’